Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

The only sure thing about luck is that it will change. ~ Bret Harte

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A bunker? We'd expected to find a path way out, maybe some kind of security breach that had let people slip through the border. Not a camp. Not a fortification. 'Illegal' didn't mean very much in this world of ninja, but the peace between nations was kept by not crossing such obvious lines so blatantly.

Sending a force into a non-allied nation, without warning or agreement… well. That could look a lot like an attack, couldn't it? Or the start of an invasion.

Nothing good.

"Details," Tsume barked, immediately, looking tense.

I spread my senses, no longer trying to focus in narrowly to find the faintest traces of chakra, and searched for it. It wasn't below us directly but I'd brought us close to it. There was a spread of energy about the size of a building, deep in the earth. It was clearly shielded in some way and if I hadn't been looking – if we hadn't been searching in this area – we would likely have walked right over it and noticed nothing.

Tokuma gave the location of it, words clipped and tense. "There are five ninja inside of it," he reported.

Five ninja. Six, if you counted the one that had already been killed. Was that all of them? Or were there more? Were they especially strong – to be sent alone deep into enemy territory? Or were they expected to rely mostly on stealth, on not being noticed in the first place?

How long had they been here? A village wouldn't send its strongest out long term; it simply couldn't afford to. And the strongest, the headliners, would be noticed and missed. But that didn't necessarily mean they weren't strong, either. How could you know the strength of people who only lived in the shadows?

And, what, most importantly, were they doing here?

"One of them is monitoring a seismometer," Tokuma went on. "I believe they're aware that we're here."

A seismometer monitored vibrations. I knew of them as measuring earthquakes, large scale things, but I supposed it was not too different to monitor smaller vibrations – like footsteps. It would take skill to interpret, but it was technology (or fuuinjutsu, maybe) and wouldn't rely on having to possess specialized skills like sensing so the entire team would be able to use it.

But it was another piece of bad news for us.

A sneak attack was out. They'd known we were here before we knew they were. We might have been walking into an ambush – might still be if they judged it worth it to take us out. Was the area trapped? Probably. Nothing obvious enough to give them away, but no one ever left a base undefended. Even a self-destruct would be bad news if it was strong enough.

"Right," Tsume said. "Shikako, you're going to drop from chakra exhaustion. They know we're here, but they might not know we're tracking them. We've been moving slow and uneven, on the ground; it's a reasonable bluff we've got injured. How long can you keep your chakra compressed?"

I staggered forward, a couple of weak and wobbling steps, before buckling and hitting the ground. "Ever?" I hazarded. It didn't take any energy to keep my chakra hidden. But I'd never tried to time it, either.

"Do it," she said, and strode forward to pick me up. I dangled from her hand for a minute, like a puppy, before I was unceremoniously dropped over Kuromaru's back. "We're not an attack squad. We don't want to be trying to fight them on our own. First priority is to get back to the outpost – then we can deal with this shit. Gather what information you can while we're here, but keep moving."

She gave a swift nod to the rest of the team, and leapt up into the trees. I clung tight to Kuromaru's fur as he followed, powerful muscles bunching beneath the skin. It would have been fun if the situation wasn't quite so serious.

Attacking the bunker was going to be hard, I could see that. We'd have to be able to reach it first. Which wasn't a given, when it was buried so deep with Rock ninja of unknown strength and ability inside it. Talk about fighting someone on their own turf. It was going to be especially difficult if we wanted to keep the place undamaged and find out what they were doing inside. There had to be some kind of records or information in there, right?

But it would be protected too, and if we came in full force with an attack squad, they'd have enough warning to bug out and get to safety.

A complicated situation.

Maybe I could try to seal it… but that would involve surrounding it with an unbroken seal, to delineate the edges. It wasn't the kind of seal that was safe to use unenclosed and it was most certainly not something you could use without being entirely outside of it. Given the size of the bunker, that would be a whole lot of paper. And even if I could get the seal, getting it in place would be another matter entirely.

Theoretically, sealing it away was a perfect solution between the risk of combat and risk of lost intelligence. Practically… it wasn't going to be possible. Unless I came up with a new anchor for it…

But maybe it would be better to raise the bunker up and bring it to the surface. That would open it up for attack. It would require an amplified earth jutsu but that was easier to do – assuming they couldn't counter it…

I ran through the scenarios furiously, mind churning over the situation.

There are moments in life when you're so focused on one thing that it is something entirely opposite that takes you by surprise.

Above us, a hawk called out, the sound a familiar echo of the Konoha Aviary. It shouldn't have been unusual – the sound of a bird in the forest – but it was. Of course it was.

It was a messenger hawk.

My attention snapped upwards, away from the ground beneath us. Tsume redirected, feet leaping from branch to tree trunk, momentum to the vertical instead. Kuromaru skittered to a halt, nearly unseating me. Muta bypassed us, kikaichu rising out of his gourd to buzz in the air.

But the Rock ninja was probably more surprised when he dropped down out of the canopy to land square in the middle of a Konoha team.

Dawning horror started to form on his face, visible in the barest opening of the mouth, the widening of his eyes. I leapt forward, sliding from Kuromaru's back with all the speed I could muster, crashing into him and catching him with my shadow. It was dark out, which meant the only shadow that existed was what I forced into reality with my chakra, but it was enough for Shadow Possession when we were touching. Enough, even, to wrap another band of Shadow Neckbind around his mouth to silence him.

Kikaichu swarmed in the air and the hawk gave another cry – distressed – as it was brought down, message and all.

"They saw it!" Tokuma warned.

Tsume cursed.

I slid a hand into my pouch, pulled out a Knockout Tag and slapped it on my prisoner. He fell, and I let him drape over the branch.

Looks like we're fighting after all. And we'd been so close to getting away, too.

"Muta! Give us cover!" Tsume ordered, spinning and heading back the way we'd come, towards the bunker.

More kikaichu swarmed, buzzing from the gourd on his back and spreading out into the air in undulating waves and settling down on the ground.

Ah, shit. It was some kind of sensory blocking technique – the kikaichu carrying just enough chakra to be a staticky white noise, and grouping randomly together in clumps, mimicking the strength of a chakra signal that meant 'person'. It probably had an equal effect on the Rock nin – all that buzzing would no doubt make it difficult to pick out a footstep out of the mess. And even non-sensor type ninja relied on being able to sense the chakra of their opponents, especially when they were trying to come up from underground.

It didn't make me feel any less like - yeah okay - any less like a moth beating around a fire, betrayed by my own senses into thinking it was the sun.

An arm wrapped around my shoulder – a thick heavy white sleeve; Muta – and dragged me backwards, from branch to branch.

I went with it, hands flying through the seals for Shadow Sight, pulling the technique across my eyes and bringing the world into stark greyscale.

Better.

"I'm fine," I said, tapping his arm so he would release me. I found my feet and kept moving, keeping pace with the team.

"Apologies," he said, voice low. "My Insect Jamming Technique blocks chakra-sensing abilities."

"I noticed," I said dryly. It was a little annoying, and a little hampering, but as long as I could maintain the Shadow Sight, it shouldn't actually have been a problem. It was just slightly ironic that I was so quickly deprived of the sense I was here for.

"One of them is breaking away and heading north," Tokuma said, Byakugan focused on a far off point. "Three are heading for us. I think the last is trying to destroy the bunker."

"Go after the runner," Tsume commanded him. "We'll deal with the rest."

She looked grim.

I couldn't sense the incoming enemies – but I knew where the base was. I could deal with that, before it was too destroyed.

I speed up and hit the ground, springing ahead and drawing my lightsaber. I had no seals prepared to bring the bunker up. We'd have to go down to reach it. I could use Earth Walking – but that would be a serious mistake if any of these people were Earth ninjutsu specialists. I'd be flattened.

Instead –

Well, lightning jutsu could cut just as well as shock.

I lit up the sword and focused my chakra in the blade until it was honed and sharp. Under the cover of Shadow Sight it wasn't bright, but a solid shape of white like so much chakra formed a physical thing.

I swung it at the ground, overhead and down, like it was a goddamn sledgehammer. "Lightning style: Cutting Blade Wave!"

A line of light lashed out from the path of the blade, like a crescent moon hanging in the air. It was so close that I could feel the heat of it on my skin, the static of it making my hair stand and spread. Then it crashed and plowed into the ground, the force of it kicking up dirt and dust, blowing rocks into shrapnel, carving a gorge that widened and deepened the further from me it went.

I sprinted forward, following the crack in the ground. I'd judged it just right. It had hit the top of the bunker, just so, cracking the roof of it like taking the top off a boiled egg, but leaving it mostly undamaged.

I leapt in, dropping down and down, through the opening in the roof. It wasn't big, from the inside. The size of a large room, maybe, but there was a lot of stuff inside. Supplies. Boxes.

Exploding tags, slapped to the surfaces of everything.

The shinobi inside – a woman in her late twenties – jerked around in horror. I could see her first, inevitable, action in her eyes. All those exploding tags were supposed to destroy the bunker – a self-destruct mechanism – and she had been trying to get away before setting them off. But now I was here, and if she didn't have a choice…

I reacted.

"Shadow Stitching Jutsu!" My shadow tendrils unfurled around me, like a sea anemone unfolding, dozens of thin lines lit by the light of my sword. I couldn't see them, but moved them by feel alone, each one spearing out and through a tag and shooting up into the sky. They tangled together as they did so, becoming a column of darkness and easier to control.

The tags went off. My shadows were shredded, blown back, the rattle of the explosion reaching us even so far below.

And the kunoichi lunged at me, a full body tackle that slammed me into the wall. The breath whooshed out of me. My arms jarred, akimbo, sword at the wrong angle to strike someone in so close. My chakra was still half formed into Shadow Stitching Jutsu, stretching up into the sky – too slow to re-direct.

I head-butted her in the face, focusing my chakra on the brief point of contact, forehead leaving the inky imprint of a flash seal behind.

I triggered it, knowing it went off but the light nullified by the bands of Shadow Sight across my eyes.

She screamed like her face was melting, stumbling backwards and clawing at it. Her fingernails scrapped lines of blood into her cheeks, wet with sudden tears.

I pushed off the wall, chasing her retreating form. My chakra settled, formed again, lashed out in a Shadow Possession Jutsu that pinned her in place.

And then I slapped a Knockout Tag on her, because it seemed kinder.

I hauled her over my shoulder and ran up the walls. It seemed even deeper when going up. The insects were still buzzing, limiting what I could tell about the battles going on. But I followed the sounds back to the heart of the fight. Tsume and Muta had stuck together, keeping the fight two on three (three on three? Did Kuromaru even the score?) rather than let someone be outnumbered alone.

I judged the angles, flicked the lightsaber on close behind me and made my shadow loom over the battlefield. I felt them all in my chakra, pinned the enemies in place and left my team alone.

Muta smothered them in kikaichu, and their chakra shrank and spluttered weakly.

"What the hell was that?" Tsume snapped immediately, rounding on me. "You can't run ahead on your own! You had no idea what the situation was!"

I blinked at her, taken aback. "I secured the bunker?" I said. "That was the goal, right?" I made an aborted gestured at the body slung over my shoulder, like she might have missed it. "She was setting the self-destruct."

"Next time, wait for orders," she said. "Your team might have a plan."

"Yes, Tsume-sempai," I said, obediently and… well. I meant it. But I had an opening, I would probably still take it. And I'd had an opening. Or I'd made one, anyway.

She ran a hand over her face and let out a controlled breath that seemed markedly similar to a sigh. "Fine. The bunker. Were the exploding tags really necessary?"

"They weren't mine," I protested. "They were hers. I was just getting them out of the way."

The explosions-Shikako connection had saved my life before, but this time it was incorrect. So there.

We packed up what we could from the bunker – sealed into storage scrolls – and prepared to haul our prisoners back to the outpost. Which was where I ran into a slight problem, because I already had one slung over my shoulder before I went to pick up the hawk wrangler that I'd left in the trees.

"Allow me," Muta said, picking him up and dropping him on top of the one he was already carrying. It looked ridiculous, but there weren't really many other options. Tsume had one over her shoulder and one on Kuromaru's back. This was the problem of having more prisoners than we had people to carry them.

"Thanks," I said, because I wasn't going to argue. I was already trying to carry someone that outweighed me. I didn't want to make that two.

"Let's hope Tokuma gets the last one," Tsume said. She lifted her chin and sniffed, but apparently the air currents weren't bringing her anything new.

"He possesses the strongest Byakugan in the Hyuuga Clan," Muta said, on behalf of his comrade. "They will not be able to evade him."

I wasn't quite sure as to the accuracy of the statement or as to how one would go about measuring something like that, but I also wasn't willing to argue it, either.

It was a long trip back to the outpost, but the difficulty of carrying so many prisoners back with us was entirely worth it for the expressions on their faces when we showed up.

"I thought you were scouting, Tsume," Hayama said drolly, as his men stepped forward to take them off us. I relinquished mine in relief and rolled my shoulder to get some feeling back into it.

She huffed a short laugh. "Thought we'd lend you a hand and take care of it for you," she said. "You're going to have more than enough work on your hands in future."

He eyed her, apparently reading something into that. "Lovely. Join me in my office?"

Tsume gave a smile that was both tired and sharp. "Don't be like that. It's just like the good old days."

"I remember the old days having a lot of mud in them," he said, voice dry. "And damp. And long nights."

"Oh, yeah," she said. "It's going to be just like that." She turned and pinned me with a look. "Shikako, get some rest. We'll wait till Tokuma reports in, then we're heading back to Konoha. Be ready."

I nodded and wondered where exactly I was going to sleep. At this point 'up a tree' was a valid choice. Heck, 'right here, on my feet' was a valid choice.

"I will show you to the barracks," Muta volunteered, proving he was a spectacular human being.

"You're the best," I said with gratitude.

The barracks were pretty basic, much like the ones in the tower in the centre of the Forest of Death, but right now I didn't even care. I took off my pouch and leg holster and dropped them on the bed in the corner by the wall, shucked my shoes, and flopped down.

I was out like a light.